He nodded. "I'm worse than the Volturi," he said grimly. "I guess I've earned that."
I rolled my eyes. "The worst the Volturi can do is kill me."
He waited with tense eyes.
"You can leave me," I explained. "The Volturi, Victoria... they're nothing compared to that."
Even in the darkness, I could see the anguish twist his face - it reminded me of his expression under Jane's torturing gaze; I felt sick, and regretted speaking the truth.
"Don't," I whispered, touching his face. "Don't be sad."
He pulled one corner of his mouth up halfheartedly, but the expression didn't touch his eyes. "If there was only some way to make you see that I can't leave you," he whispered. "Time, I suppose, will be the way to convince you."
I liked the idea of time. "Okay," I agreed.
His face was still tormented. I tried to distract him with inconsequentials.
"So - since you're staying. Can I have my stuff back?" I asked, making my tone as light as I could manage.
My attempt worked, to an extent: he laughed. But his eyes retained the misery. "Your things were never gone," he told me. "I knew it was wrong, since I promised you peace without reminders. It was stupid and childish, but I wanted to leave something of myself with you. The CD, the pictures, the tickets - they're all under your floorboards."
"Really?"
He nodded, seeming slightly cheered by my obvious pleasure in this trivial fact. It wasn't enough to heal the pain in his face completely.
"I think," I said slowly, "I'm not sure, but I wonder... I think maybe I knew it the whole time."
"What did you know?"
I only wanted to take away the agony in his eyes, but as I spoke the words, they sounded truer than I expected they would.
"Some part of me, my subconscious maybe, never stopped believing that you still cared whether I lived or died. That's probably why I was hearing the voices."
There was a very deep silence for a moment. "Voices?" he asked flatly.
"Well, just one voice. Yours. It's a long story." The wary look on his face made me wish that I hadn't brought that up. Would he think I was crazy, like everyone else? Was everyone else right about that? But at least that expression - the one that made him look like something was burning him - faded.
"I've got time." His voice was unnaturally even.
"It's pretty pathetic."
He waited.
I wasn't sure how to explain. "Do you remember what Alice said about extreme sports?"
He spoke the words without inflection or emphasis. "You jumped off a cliff for fun."
"Er, right. And before that, with the motorcycle - "
"Motorcycle?" he asked. I knew his voice well enough to hear something brewing behind the calm.
"I guess I didn't tell Alice about that part."
"No."
"Well, about that... See, I found that... when I was doing something dangerous or stupid... I could remember you more clearly," I confessed, feeling completely mental. "I could remember how your voice sounded when you were angry. I could hear it, like you were standing right there next to me. Mostly I tried not to think about you, but this didn't hurt so much - it was like you were protecting me again. Like
you didn't want me to be hurt.
"And, well, I wonder if the reason I could hear you so clearly was because, underneath it all. I always knew that you hadn't stopped loving me."
Again, as I spoke, the words brought with them a sense of conviction. Of rightness. Some deep place inside me recognized truth.
His words came out half-strangled. "You... were... risking your life... to hear - "
"Shh," I interrupted him. "Hold on a second. I think I'm having an epiphany here."
I thought of that night in Port Angeles when I'd had my first delusion. I'd come up with two options. Insanity or wish fulfillment. I'd seen no third option.
But what if...
What if you sincerely believed something was true, but you were dead wrong? What if you were so stubbornly sure that you were right, that you wouldn't even consider the truth? Would the truth be silenced, or would it try to break through?
Option three: Edward loved me. The bond forged between us was not one that could be broken by absence, distance, or time. And no matter how much more special or beautiful or brilliant or perfect than me he might be, he was as irreversibly altered as I was. As I would always belong to him, so would he always be mine.
Was that what I'd been trying to tell myself?
"Oh!"
"Bella?"
"Oh. Okay. I see."
"Your epiphany?" he asked, his voice uneven and strained.
"You love me," I marveled. The sense of conviction and Tightness washed through me again.
Though his eyes were still anxious, the crooked smile I loved best flashed across his face. "Truly, I do."
My heart inflated like it was going to crack right through my ribs. It filled my chest and blocked my throat so that I could not speak.
He really did want me the way I wanted him - forever. It was only fear for my soul, for the human things he didn't want to take from me, that made him so desperate to leave me mortal. Compared to the fear that he didn't want me, this hurdle - my soul - seemed almost insignificant.
He took my face tightly between his cool hands and kissed me until I was so dizzy the forest was spinning. Then he leaned his forehead against mine, and I was not the only one breathing harder than usual.
"You were better at it than I was, you know," he told me.
"Better at what?"
"Surviving. You, at least, made an effort. You got up in the morning, tried to be normal for Charlie, followed the pattern of your life. When I wasn't actively tracking, I was... totally useless. I couldn't be around my family - I couldn't be around anyone. I'm embarrassed to admit that I more or less curled up into a ball and let the misery have me." He grinned, sheepish. "It was much more pathetic than hearing voices. And, of course, you know I do that, too."